What she really said: Fighting sexist jokes the geeky way!
Step 7: At this point, I was still running the bot on my own computer, which was clearly non-ideal. I wanted it to be in the channel all the time, not just when I was logged in! I found a python daemon implementation and made my bot run through that. Perfect! Now I could run it from one of the development servers at work.
Step 8: Unit tests, of course! No project is complete without them. I only have tests on the quote selector so far, but I am going to set up some mock tests on the bot logic.
Originally, I had called the project “whatshereallysaid”, but as I was working, I realized this could be much more broadly applied. Anyone could clone my github project and configure a bot to respond to whatever annoying comments they had to put up with. Inspired by “take back the night” and “hollaback”, I decided to rename the project “talkbackbot”.
I finished all this rather late on Friday night, so there was nobody around. I waited with anticipation to see what the response would be. To my surprise, many coworkers complimented me on creating the bot, including some I would never have guessed would appreciate it. Some people even retweeted my announcement that the bot was available on github.
It has been fascinating to watch the ongoing reactions. There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. One person even complained about the name being too long, though to his credit he realized right after he said that that several other people in the channel also have very long handles.
To me, all of this seems like typical geek behaviour: something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on “rational” grounds. Most likely, they aren’t even aware of the gut reaction fueling their logic. Interestingly, the intensity of emotion seemed to carry over into subsequent discussions, including one about women in the Python community. For the most part, I have not responded to the comments. I did shorten the bot’s name to “twsrs”, and I pointed out that it’s trivially easy to have the bot not say anything: don’t say TWSS.
In any case, I feel that I have succeeded in constructively disrupting an aspect of my work culture that made me uncomfortable. This is the first personal project I’ve ever thought of, coded, and made public, and I am pretty excited about it! It makes me so happy every time the other bot says “that’s what she said,” and my bot responds with something like:
Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel. ~ Bella Abzug
One of the most hilarious responses was a guy saying he was going to say TWSS a lot more, so he could get more quotes! I decided to add another trigger phrase just for him, since the last thing I want to do is encourage *more* TWSS!
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yetzt:
March 19th, 2012 at 9:12 pm
absolutely awesome!
T:
March 19th, 2012 at 9:29 pm
This is absolutely amazing! I admire your:
1) initiative, to be bothered by something and then take the time and effort to do something about it;
2) creativity, to come up with such a cool and elegant solution to the problem;
3) empathy, in fostering discussion and discourse over an issue rather than just condemnation; and
4) skillz! Reading your explanation of how you went about creating this thing is so amazing to me. I’m in awe.
Wraithan:
March 19th, 2012 at 9:51 pm
I love the idea of this bot. I look forward to pulling out the quotes and the random line grabber and tossing it into my bot ZenIRCBot as a service people can run. Thanks for open sourcing this!
Jack Danger Canty:
March 19th, 2012 at 10:27 pm
You are wonderful and brave and brilliant. I love this project SO much.
Denise:
March 19th, 2012 at 10:43 pm
That is the best thing ever. I love it!
Karin Kallmaker:
March 19th, 2012 at 10:48 pm
Good for you – and your sample quote is one of my favorites!
Outsmarting “brogrammers” » mythago:
March 19th, 2012 at 10:52 pm
[...] Smith found a subtle, yet very effective, way of dealing with clueless nerd guy making a particular sexist [...]
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Violet:
March 19th, 2012 at 11:06 pm
Great post. Brilliant bot :D
Frustrated by TWSS long ago I started saying, “That’s what he said.”
Sometimes I say it in response to someone saying TWSS, but I’ll often say it just before anyone has a chance to say TWSS first. The way some men look at me when I say it is… priceless.
Dan:
March 19th, 2012 at 11:41 pm
Love this. By the way, there’s a British idiomatic equivalent: “as the archbishop said to the actress”. It works exactly the same:
A: “I’m trying to solve this problem but it’s really hard!”
B: “As the archbishop said to the actress.”
Although both forms imply a sexual situation between a woman and a man, it doesn’t really matter which gender does the saying. In the end, the joke isn’t inherently sexist, it’s just a bit childish and annoying.
Mym:
March 19th, 2012 at 11:50 pm
I love this so much.
One of my friends groups instead uses “That’s what zie said!” I’ve been trying to import this to the others, both as a better version and to raise awareness of the neutral pronoun.
Katherine:
March 20th, 2012 at 12:01 am
Thank you thank you THANK YOU. Occasionally I also find it funny, but more often than not if people are responding to what I say with ‘that’s what she said’ then it makes me feel like I can’t say anything without having to vet, scrutinise, and otherwise censor my own speech to avoid getting twss’d. I won’t be able to use the bot, as my issues are primarily people saying it on voice chat (Ventrilo) or in person, but I WILL be able to quote things at people myself, if I keep a few good quotes on me and some quote websites bookmarked!
I had no idea how to counter this when I encountered it other than to remove myself from conversations. You’ve given me a snappy comeback for something that I thought impossible.
Jessamyn:
March 20th, 2012 at 4:33 am
I had no idea that somewhere else in the world there was another feminist geek named Jessamyn. Your bot was a work of genius!
Pluis:
March 20th, 2012 at 5:37 am
Once I learn more Python I want to do as awesome things with it as you do!
ConFigures:
March 20th, 2012 at 5:42 am
Full of win!
MsInformation:
March 20th, 2012 at 6:34 am
Pure. Epic. Win.
C:
March 20th, 2012 at 7:04 am
Cool project!
I’m an academic librarian, and, FWIW, in my workplace TWSS would most likely get you stared down. Using it constantly would get you referred to HR. You might hear it once in a while during a lunch conversation, but usually with some indication by the person saying it that they know they’re being a bit outre.
KrisCruser:
March 20th, 2012 at 7:52 am
Absolutely love this. Creative, smart, and such fun!
ollie:
March 20th, 2012 at 8:25 am
This is hilarious and brilliant. It seems like you are hilarious and brilliant! It made me happy to read about this :-)
Cthandhs:
March 20th, 2012 at 10:22 am
+10 for unit tests!
Nicole:
March 20th, 2012 at 10:40 am
This is awesome. I love that you
1. developed a positive way to fight the purely irritating TWSS jokes rather than stooping to the same level.
2. You used some best programming practice to implement this.
A double hit to to the brogrammers.
Piglet:
March 20th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
*PURE* genius!
(And now I don’t know which of you [if either?] is my Jessamyn! Does one of you go to WisCon? If yes, hi! [If no, come on down! http://wiscon.info/ ])
Angelique:
March 20th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
This is inspiring & awesome. Bravo.
Rock:
March 20th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
This is really cool on so many levels. If only I was less of a schlemiel, perhaps I could do something as awesome :)
Peta:
March 20th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Genius! I have noticed that the best way to combat thoughtless sexism is to turn the tables and make them taste a bit of their own medicine, but I’ve never managed it with such style. Thank you for creating and sharing.
maxomai:
March 20th, 2012 at 6:43 pm
Seriously, that’s just unprofessional.
Good on Ms. Smith for turning this around.
Jose:
March 20th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
Great idea and good work.
Though I can sympathize with too many bots in a work channel. At first we had one that responded to stuff with silly chatter about monkeys and ninjas. Then someone added another one that… hmmm I can’t remember. Either way they started feeding off each other and the repetition of quotes was so ugh. We ended up banning them all. Except for the URL shortener one which was relatively quiet.
kevix:
March 21st, 2012 at 2:00 am
this is awesome of multiple levels. you addressed a problem in a creative way, using your tools empowered by free software, making a repo for all to share and hack to their purpose. Then you get your work culture to start to think about what they say and start a conversation in a non-confrontational way with humor and injections of knowledge to further educate them about the existence of smart women who say cool things. And it will hopefully seep into their consciousness and thus improve all involved.
Doug:
March 21st, 2012 at 4:15 am
What a great solution… it is thoughtful, addresses a problem, and does so with a bit of humor. If this can’t affect change, nothing can. And great story to boot! Recommended reading for all… thanks for sharing this. (Wouldn’t a collection of these stories be quite useful as a practical guide? Oh, and it could be a great graphic novel, too :)
jon:
March 21st, 2012 at 7:19 am
Brilliant! And interesting reactions to the bot, too. Thanks for taking the time to write it up so clearly and entertainingly!
Rob...:
March 21st, 2012 at 8:00 am
That’s just excellent!
Red:
March 21st, 2012 at 8:26 am
Fantastic! :D
matew:
March 21st, 2012 at 8:36 am
Congrats – totes like your idea … you know how to take them guys. Keep up the good work!
Sam:
March 21st, 2012 at 9:46 am
You, lady, are a genius.
#geekwin
Amy Stephen:
March 21st, 2012 at 10:30 am
Brilliant.
Justin:
March 21st, 2012 at 10:33 am
Nice work! Love how you fought fire with fire, and how you linked it to the very system with which you had the issue. If they want yours to stop, all they have to do is stop theirs. Brilliant!
Amy:
March 21st, 2012 at 11:02 am
I love this! I am a fan of quotes in general; but I love that this is in response to TWSS!
Kayvan Sylvan:
March 21st, 2012 at 11:48 am
This is really cool. You are amazing. Thanks for sharing!
Annabelle Wright:
March 21st, 2012 at 12:12 pm
You ARE wonderful and brave and brilliant, and I am so PROUD that you are my much-loved niece!
Hamilton-Lovecraft:
March 21st, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Once the “TWSS” habit is set, it’s surprisingly hard to derail. I switched to saying “in Nathon Fillion’s mouth!” for a couple of days, and finally settled on “giggity” (Family Guy reference), which I’m torn on – alone, it’s gender-neutral, but its source material is certainly in questionable taste.
Courtney Hall:
March 21st, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Fantastic! I would love it if you would post some screen shots of your bot in action.
Brian:
March 21st, 2012 at 1:36 pm
I wrote a bot for use on our Jabber channel at work in much the same way you did, only mine was based on pyjabberbot. Since we’ve got lots of MySQL instances running around, I put all the data for things like that into MySQL (and the bot loads it at startup). Have you considered such an approach?
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Rob Masters:
March 21st, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Pure genius.
I am also amused by the rather unexpected (and deeply geeky) reaction of wanting to quote-collect.
Out of curiosity (I am not a part of the Python community – I’m more of a Perl sort), what was the alternate trigger you came up with? I assume it is a fairly unusual phrase, to avoid accidental triggering.
Abdabs:
March 21st, 2012 at 2:20 pm
Full of win!
Working in a male-dominated industry (engineering, manufacturing), I got tired of being called ‘girl’. The worst offenders stopped once I started consistently referring to them as ‘boy’. I just wish I could do the same to sports commentators.
PhDoula:
March 21st, 2012 at 2:20 pm
Excellent work! The one thing missing is the “Oh-Snap!” bot that replies immediately after the TWSRS bot.
slfisher:
March 21st, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Not only is it a great idea, what a great programming project that you’ll be able to show off later.
Alison Cassidy:
March 21st, 2012 at 3:10 pm
OMG!! This is absolutely brilliant!!
Matt Simmons:
March 21st, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Clever hack!
What she really said « The Science of Heroes:
March 21st, 2012 at 4:23 pm
[...] (and seriously, who thought that was a good idea?), she wrote a bot to respond. Read all about it: What she really said: Fighting sexist jokes the geeky way!on the Geek Feminism Blog Share [...]
Jean Camp:
March 21st, 2012 at 9:40 pm
We went through the same thing with that stupid, “Internet like a penis” thing responding with, “Internet like a vagina”. It seemed to stop. ;-)
You rock.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=759714
Mar Velouse:
March 22nd, 2012 at 4:19 am
Wow, how fantastic. Well done for such a substantial response.
In the UK, twss is not used as much. They use ‘said the actress to the bishop’.
Jessamyn Smith:
March 22nd, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Hi Piglet,
Yes, I (the bot creator) am the Jessamyn you know from WisCon!
Ben McKenzie:
March 22nd, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Never have I wished so fervently that I still used IRC – or that I had a permanent channel all of my own to run a bot on. Brilliant idea, great execution. This is the geek way!
Dorothea:
March 22nd, 2012 at 7:26 pm
I LOVE YOU. That is all.
Why Can’t I Remember to Do These On Time? « Dan Flink's Blog For All Things WMST 491:
March 23rd, 2012 at 12:31 am
[...] up, a bit about a bot someone built to counter “that’s what she said” jokes online. Thought the idea w as amusing, figured I’d [...]
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Tomek:
March 23rd, 2012 at 2:06 am
Fight them with their own weapon. :) nice!
Miss Andrist:
March 23rd, 2012 at 7:17 am
Has this been ported to PHP yet?
If not, it’s about to be. hat == “pink”) {
return $this->sisterhood(“powerful”);
}
Miss Andrist:
March 23rd, 2012 at 7:19 am
:( Your XSS filter ate my cute dev joke. Let’s try again.
if ( self::hat == pink ) {
return self::sisterhood(‘powerful’);
}
Vylar Kaftan » What she really said: a cool response to sexist jokes:
March 23rd, 2012 at 1:15 pm
[...] This story made my day. Jessamyn Smith, an open-source programmer in Portland, was tired of seeing a particular joke on her IRC channel (the familiar “that’s what she said!” joke). She wrote a bot to follow up every “that’s what she said!” joke with an actual quote from a notable woman, just to get people thinking. The reaction from coworkers was surprisingly good. You can see more at: Fighting sexist jokes the geeky way. [...]
olad:
March 24th, 2012 at 7:37 am
What’s a bot?
Blog Roundup - Femmedia:
March 24th, 2012 at 8:45 am
[...] Friday” #1: Serial Killers “Freaky Friday” #2: Relationships From Hell “Freaky Friday” #3: “Different Authors, Same Theme” – Kidnapping/Abduc… What she really said: Fighting sexist jokes the geeky way! ‘The Hunger Games’ Rating: [...]
Bob-o M:
March 24th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
We have a guy at work that says TWSS all the time! So everyone at the office started saying That’s What Dan Said and even created a Facebook page devoted to some of the stuff he says! It didn’t deter him one bit though..
Joanne:
March 24th, 2012 at 7:44 pm
Love this story! Way to go on making a point about appropriate talk in the workplace! I will have to read some of your other posts now. :)
Stella Maris:
March 26th, 2012 at 4:26 am
Awesome, inspiring, educational…thank you!!!
David Middlebrooke:
March 26th, 2012 at 11:03 am
Cool! Inspired, in fact.
Jessamyn Smith:
March 27th, 2012 at 2:44 pm
That’s great! I saw a link about someone putting it into a Perl bot, but you’ll be the first to port it to PHP as far as I know. :-)
Jessamyn Smith:
March 27th, 2012 at 2:51 pm
I haven’t got a lot of public writing, yet, but I have a few ideas for blog posts in the works. Thank you for the interest!
Rob Shields:
March 28th, 2012 at 11:12 am
I don’t get the technical stuff at all but I think the idea and the effort is brilliant. If you can’t join em beat em…well done.
Hannah:):
March 31st, 2012 at 4:08 am
Brilliant! For some reason my (female!) mates like using this, even in utterly random circumstances.
Eg.
Me: Hey, was the marathon hard?
Friend: THATS WHAT SHE SAID TROLOLOLOL
Me: …… O.O
un1c0rn:
March 31st, 2012 at 7:37 am
My bot SweetieBelle on ponychat now responds to that’s what she said too, with the quotes from your quotes.txt. Thanks for being awesome!
Jessamyn Smith:
April 4th, 2012 at 9:43 am
That’s great! I love hearing that people are making use of my quotes and/or bot. :-)
Thijs:
April 6th, 2012 at 5:51 am
You can also use ‘twistd’ for daemonizing your twisted bot. It’s part of twisted..
Saleem:
April 6th, 2012 at 2:47 pm
A colleague of mine at ThoughtWorks directed me to your blog entry after a discussion in our town hall about whether the programmer-culture is exclusivist.
Quite inspiring and hyper-cool. Thank you so very much!